Carl Allen and his wife, Gigi, have been supporting Batson Children’s Hospital through their company’s sponsorship of the Allen Exploration Pro-Am, as part of the Sanderson Farms Championship.

The Allens remarked that walking through the quarter-mile of hallways young patients travel to an imaging center built for adults and looking over a neonatal intensive care unit filled with three times more babies than it was built to serve gives one a true picture of the importance of the Campaign for Children’s of Mississippi.

This year the Allens decided to give $500,000 to the $100 million philanthropic drive to fund expansion of pediatric care facilities at UMMC.

“If you tour the Batson Children’s Hospital,” Allen said, “in an hour and a half, you will see the need. The people working at Batson do a tremendous job, but they are not working in the best conditions. Walking to imaging will really get your attention. You’ll see how far the children have to travel and know it may be very scary for them.”

Creating an imaging center designed for pediatric patients within the children’s hospital is one of the goals of the Campaign. Also, in the plans are a new children’s tower that will be home to an expanded NICU with private rooms, additional pediatric ICU rooms and surgical suites. A pediatric specialty clinic will be built nearby.

Allen’s friendship with Sanderson Farms CEO and board chairman Joe Sanderson, Jr. drew him in, first to making a 10-year sponsorship commitment to Mississippi’s only PGA TOUR event, and then to supporting the state’s only children’s hospital. “His passion for Mississippi and for Batson Children’s Hospital is just infectious.”

The Allens, with four children and two grandchildren, have chosen Batson Children’s Hospital as one of the charities supported by Allen Exploration, he said, “and this is just the beginning. We want to share with others the critical needs at Batson Children’s Hospital. We’ve got to get the Campaign for Children’s of Mississippi going so we can take the medical facilities at Batson from one extreme to the other.”